Tagged With "neural state"
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The Healing Place Podcast - Shenandoah Chefalo: Garbage Bag Suitcase
What a delightful conversation Teri Wellbrock engaged in with the passionate and compassionate Shenandoah Chefalo, author of "Garbage Bag Suitcase: A Memoir" and faculty member of The Center for Trauma Resilient Communities. They dove into the depths of: the healing work of Crossnore and The Center for Trauma Resilient Communities; growing up in the foster care system; trauma-brain; 3 proven resilience-building factors; compassion approaches; and why they dislike tomatoes!
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The Many Faces of Grief
“…Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding…. And could you keep your heart in wonder at the daily miracles of your life, your pain would not seem less wondrous than your joy; much of your pain is self-chosen. It is the bitter potion by which the physician within you heals your sick self….” – From The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran There are many kinds of loss that we can encounter in life. However, losses surrounding addiction can be particularly confusing; they tend...
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Therapy with Neurofeedback
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2019/02/04/689747637/if-youre-often-angry-or-irritable-you-may-be-depressed My response to the above article from NPR: Depression is the word people use when they feel bad. What people in this piece are struggling to understand is that depression is not one thing or in fact “a thing” at all. It’s certainly not a useful diagnosis. DSM diagnosis constricts our understanding rather than enhancing it. Here they are struggling to understand states of...
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To Heal CPTSD, Do You Need to Love Yourself?
One of the messages that’s been drilled into us by popular culture is that “you have to love yourself before you can love someone else.” This is something people tell you when you get your heart broken and you feel like you must be… no good! And for a lot of years, every time I heard this I felt like a different species than everyone else. Because there were times when I didn’t particularly love myself – and here and there when I was younger, times when I hated myself. But there was a never...
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Trauma, Attachment, and Relationships
Interventions in the Attachment and Relationship Problems Trauma Can Cause Julie De Wilde Alfred Adler Graduate School Abstract Much research has been done on the negative effects of trauma on attachment, which then has negative effects on relationships. Research more recently has focused on the positive post traumatic growth that can happen when clients receive safe, healthy attachment to a therapist they can trust. Research also includes the benefits to the client when a therapist includes...
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Trauma-Sensitive Yoga Can be a Great Coping Tool & Here's How to Bring it Into Your Practice [bustle.com]
By Jay Polish, Bustle, August 18, 2019 Whether you’ve never tried yoga or are deeply into your practice, you probably know that yoga has an intense way of integrating your body’s movements with your mind’s inner chatter. For some, that connection facilitates a sense of calm and restoration. For others, that peace seems far away, if not impossible, and yoga classes offer more fear than relief. When yoga calls unexpected attention to your mind and body — and when it involves subtle competition...
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Triggered by the Holidays? [attachmenttraumanetwork.org]
From the blog manager [of the Attachment & Trauma Network blog] Many of us raising children affected by early trauma and attachment disorders know holiday stress all too well. Even the most well-meaning relatives can inflict additional pain, sometimes because they simply do not understand, other times because they cannot help but judge. Our decisions, our families, our lives, may look very different from what they dreamed, hoped, or expected. Old hurts get triggered and we find ourselves...
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VA TICNs eNote Special Edition Vol. 4 [grscan.com]
*Special Edition: Uplift* Below you will find some resources to help with the life changes as a result of COVID-19. Please feel free to pick and choose to share with your networks or simply forward along this email. Tuning Into the Beauty of the World from Home Explore.com has tons of live feeds, from the Sheep Barn at Farm Sanctuary and the Gathering Room at Old Friends Senior Dog Sanctuary to the Smith River in California's Jedidiah Smith Redwoods State Park . Take a virtual garden tour on...
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Webinar: Cultivating Our Best Selves in Response to COVID-19 | Tuesday, March 17 at Noon PDT
How to use the skills of the Community Resiliency Model (CRM) for self and others to be the calm in the storm as we face the unknown. Free Webinar Tuesday, March 17 at Noon PDT Speakers: Elaine Miller-Karas, LCSW Linda Grabbe, PhD, FNP-BC, PMHNP-BC Zoom Webinar Registration Link: https://zoom.us/j/715837300 Additional ways to join are listed at the bottom of this post. About the webinar leaders: Elaine Miller-Karas is the Executive Director and co-founder of the Trauma Resource Institute and...
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Wellness and Resiliency Toolkit for Kids with Trauma
I'm excited to share a booklet created for youth in Oregon foster care at a Wellness camp this summer. Youth were provided with these quick, easy and effective (and evidence based) "Mindful Moments" exercises in their Wellness Toolkits and they were practiced throughout the day at camp so that they could be remembered in times of stress and dysregulation. The exercised are designed to quickly bring them back to a state of calm. The youth really enjoyed them, and found them easy and...
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What is Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (CPTSD)?
Most people have heard of post-traumatic stress disorder that afflicts many men and women returning from a war zone. It is characterized by flashbacks, unstable moods, and survivor’s remorse. However, many have never heard of a condition that often develops in childhood and changes the course of the child’s life forever, complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD). For a good definition of CPTSD, we turned to Beauty After Bruises, an organization that offers outreach focused on adult...
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9 Ways to Access Your Inner Strength During Traumatic Times (wakeup-world.com)
A traumatic experience is anything that severely threatens your emotional, psychological or physical well-being. Right now in the world, that would be the COVID-19 epidemic. Not only are many of us losing our jobs while being forced into isolation with scarce resources, but our very survival is being challenged. That’s a lot to deal with! Trauma is essentially what happens when we feel totally powerless, and are frozen internally into that state of being. But here’s the liberating truth:...
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A Day At a Time
We are not strangers to unusual challenges in the addiction’s world. We have lived with chaos and unmanageability before and we have learned to use program principals to create calm in a storm. We have also learned to accept and even embrace challenges as part of our spiritual growth. And we have found that embracing those challenges has ultimately led to our being happier, stronger and more resilient people. This current moment in time however, is giving “practicing these principles in all...
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ACEs Connection's Inclusion Tool makes sure nobody's left out
We developed ACEs Connection's Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Tool — called the Inclusion Tool, for short — to ensure that ACEs initiatives across the world focus on being inclusive when forming a steering committee, recruiting leaders, providing education about ACEs science, recruiting members, or providing resources and services within their communities. The more inclusive your ACEs initiative is, the more diverse it will be, giving your initiative a real shot at achieving equity and...
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Are You Re-Traumatizing Yourself? 16 Things We Do That Can Set Us Back with Childhood PTSD
Part of the damage from abuse and neglect in childhood is what actually happened when we were kids. But a significant part of the problem today comes from what I call "Inside Traumas." These are self-defeating behaviors that are common to people who are frequently in a state of dysregulation. They start as an innocent attempt to feel calm and stable, but they can grow into significant traumas that cause real problems for us and others. If you'd like to learn about my online course, Healing...
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Calming Your Anxious Mind Through Rhythmic Movement
5 Rhythmic Movement Practices That Can Calm Our Anxious Mind
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Can EFT Play in Integral Role in Helping Victims of Sexual Assault? New Research Says YES
“Sexual injury (assault or otherwise) can lie at the heart of a multitude of presenting client issues, ranging from money blocks to physical health problems to a “fear of being seen” as well as more obvious concerns like intimacy challenges.” Alina Frank, author of How to Want Sex Again This is not an easy topic to discuss, but it is an important one. It is a topic that as EFT professionals we continue to need to further understand and make a difference in helping people to heal from. It...
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Caught the Coronavirus Blues? Research Shows that Music Medicine is a Powerful Antidote (wakeup-world.com)
English acoustic-physics pioneer, John Stuart Reid, explains how Music Medicine can banish the blues (and fear) associated with the corona virus, while boosting our immune system to help vanquish any pathogen. The simple antidote for low spirits and fear, which Nature provided for us, is music. Not just any music, but music that calms us and brings us joy. Nature’s “music” for our ancient ancestors was provided in a variety of ways, such as psithurism (the sound of the wind in the trees and...
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Childhood PTSD and Avoidance: Learning to Be OK in Groups (Resilience Series)
It’s super common for those of us who grew up with abuse and neglect when we were small, to feel as adults that we are on the outside somehow. When we're in groups we feel as if we are only partly in it, and never really included . Or we start as a full participant but pull away over time. We un-include ourselves. But it feel like other people are keeping us out. The telltale sign that being on the outside could be a personal choice, even when it doesn’t feel like it, is that we’re almost...
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Community Resiliency Model: An Innovative Approach to Addressing Burnout
Join the Illinois ACEs Response Collaborative for our next free webinar in our continuing series on best practices to prevent and mitigate the effects of provider burnout this Thursday, March 12th, at 10:00 am CDT. The second session of the IL ACEs Response Collaborative's series on burnout will discuss the Community Resiliency Model, developed by Elaine Miller-Karas of the Trauma Resource Institute, and explain how it prevents burnout in the workplace. The Community Resiliency Model creates...
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Controlled Breathing Calms Your Brain (wakeup-world.com)
The way you breathe — whether fast or slow, shallow or deep — is intricately tied to your body as a whole, sending messages that affect your mood , your stress levels and even your immune system. Yet, breathing is unique in that it’s both easily ignored (becoming a basic background of your life) and revered at the same time. In the latter case, it’s almost instinctual to advise someone to “take a deep breath” if they’re feeling anxious, stressed or fearful. While it’s long been known that...
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Coronavirus Pandemic likely to Trigger more Post-Traumatic Stress Cases, LSU Researcher Says [nola.com]
By Mark Schleifstein, NOLA.com, March 30, 2020 A combination of stress, trauma and depression triggered by the coronavirus pandemic after the virus abates is likely to increase what’s already a high number of cases of post-traumatic stress disorder among Louisiana residents, who have been hammered by natural and man-made disasters in the past, according to a behavioral epidemiologist at the Louisiana State University School of Public Health. Associate professor Ariane Rung bases that...
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CRI is hiring an Associate Director!
Community Resilience Initiative is seeking an innovative and passionate individual to join our organization as an Associate Director (AD). The AD reports to the Executive Director and to the Board of Directors. Job Overview The role of the Associate Director is to sustain the resilience-based, trauma-responsive capacity building work at the local, regional, state and national stage for which CRI is recognized. Success in this position will be evidenced by recognition of its exceptional...
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Defining Resilience Series: Step 5 - Healthy Habit Formation
Transforming our habits is a powerful tool we can utilize as we continue along our healing journey.
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Donna Jackson Nakazawa on dislodging the trauma headspace & making micro-changes
Cissy's note: Two more posts from Donna Jackson Nakazawa's Facebook page posts which she has graciously allowed to be shared here on ACEs Connection . For more, read Donna Jackson Nakazawa's new book, The Angel and the Assassin: The Tiny Brain Cell that Changed the Course of Medicine and follow her on Facebook , Twitter , and Instagram
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Effective way to do Meditation
The most effective way to do meditation is to take your mind to the zero thought state. Meditation should not be something in which you try to make you mind silent. Your mind shall become silent automatically with the help of your subconscious mind power. We have written some posts on the basics of meditation and zero thought of mind . We really appreciate you if you read our blog once. And if you have any opinion please let us know. I know in the community of ace connection, there's a lot...
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Effective way to do Meditation
The most effective way to do meditation is to take your mind to the zero thought state. Meditation should not be something in which you try to make you mind silent. Your mind shall become silent automatically with the help of your subconscious mind power. We have written some posts on the basics of meditation and zero thought of mind . We really appreciate you if you read our blog once. And if you have any opinion please let us know. I know in the community of ace connection, there's a lot...
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Four Ways to Calm Your Mind in Stressful Times (greatergood.berkeley.edu)
Life throws chaos at us on a regular basis—whether it’s our finances, our relationships, or our health. In the work world, around 50 percent of people are burned out in industries like health care , banking , and nonprofits , and employers spend $300 billion per year on workplace-related stress. When we’re stressed, we’re less likely to notice if a colleague looks burned out or sad and more likely to get irritated if they don’t perform as we expect. However, when you’re in a calmer and...
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FREE WEBINAR: Community Resilience Model- An Innovative Approach to Addressing Burnout
Join the IL ACEs Response Collaborative for the latest webinar in our continuing series on best practices to prevent and mitigate the effects of provider burnout.
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From Compassion Fatigue to Healing Centered Engagement: Turning Trauma Informed Values into Action
To pave the way for a truly strengths-based approach to full healing and recovery for both service users and burned out staff, we must educate them on (1) the central role of primal body responses to trauma (past and present), and (2) the early development of adaptive thoughts and behaviors in response to
traumatic experience.
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Fuzzy Slippers: How Do Self-Care as a Trauma Survivor
When I recommend the need for self-care to trauma survivors, they say it can feel like a chore. Some of them even roll their eyes and tell me, “You mean you want me to take care of myself? Ugh. Who has time for that?!” It’s tempting for any person to undervalue self-care. But for trauma survivors, resistance to self-care has much deeper roots. Healing takes a focused, gentle approach. Self-Care as a Practice of Welcoming Your Needs Many trauma survivors learned to do without self-care...
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Great pandemic resilience building activities for youth by ITRC CA steering committee member Lil Milagro Henriquez
I hope everyone is staying safe during these perilous times. I wanted to share some of the resources that Mycelium Youth Network is putting together. I'm extremely proud of the programming that we've put together and the community partners that we're working with for these projects. We've put together comprehensive youth and adult programming all designed with mental, socio-emotional, and physical resilience in mind. A full listing of classes can be accessed on our website . All of our youth...
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How Mindfulness Actually Works, and Why It Can Change Your Life [medium.com]
Gary Weber estimates that he has clocked over 30,000 hours of meditation and yoga. It all began in 1972. As a 29-year-old Ph.D. student at Penn State University, he felt that he was struggling for control over his own brain. Like many of us, it frustrated him that he couldn’t manage the constant stream of thoughts roaming around in his consciousness. Anxieties about the past, the future, and everything in between would come and go without him having any say in the matter. Deciding that...
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How shallow breathing affects your whole body [headspace.com]
Laura's note: Many factors can contribute to a tendency to breathe shallowly, including childhood trauma. When your central nervous system has been stuck on constant alert for years--maybe even a lifetime--holding oneself in a way that restricts complete inhalations and exhalations comes with the territory. Many of us have a very hard time relaxing and letting go in a way that allows our breath to occur the way it is designed to for optimal health. And if on top of it you aren't aware of the...
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How to Use the Breath to Strengthen Your Mind [mindful.org]
Mind and breath—a shift in one impacts the other. We can train our breath to influence our emotional state, and loosen the grip of stress and anxiety. How you’re breathing can tell you something about your current state of mind—maybe you’re feeling pretty good, thinking about happy hour cocktails with colleagues. Or maybe you’re feeling a bit stressed, trying to wrap everything up before the workday ends. Not to say that all stress is bad, says Emma Seppälä , Director of the Center for...
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'I Can Be Free Again': How Music Brings Healing at Sing Sing [psmag.com]
"Never ran, never will!" is the gangster-bravado motto that people use to explain Brownsville, Brooklyn, with its blocks and blocks of low-income housing projects. Even the grungiest hipster artisans, who've pretty much invaded Brooklyn in recent years, still stay away from Brownsville. Growing up there in the crack era of the 1980s, Joseph Wilson was surrounded by crack dealers and addicts. His mother was an addict, so his grandmother wound up raising him—and teaching him to love music. She...
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2019 Beyond Paper Tigers Conference Series - Why Take Course One and Course Two?
Community Resilience Initiative is officially launching a new series of blog posts, building to our 2019 Beyond Paper Tigers conference on June 25th - 27th. We’ll cover a range of topics relevant to conference material, events, and inspirations. In addition to the regular conference, CRI is offering two training add-on options on Tuesday June 25, 2019 prior to the conference: Resilience-Based Trainings, Course One and Two . https://criresilient.org/beyon...re-conference-event/ “A group of...
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Listen to These Uplifting Songs to Stay Optimistic and Positive Right Now (thriveglobal.com)
The Beatles’ “Here Comes the Sun” streams through the speakers at Montefiore Nyack Hospital whenever a Covid-19 patient gets discharged, the New York Times recently reported. At other local hospitals, Alicia Keys’ “Empire State of Mind” serves as the celebratory track. Researchers have found many benefits of turning to music to reduce stress, boost our mood , and help us increase our resilience, so it comes as no surprise that so many people are turning to music during this emotional time.
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Mindfulness Stress Reduction Techniques for Healing
Whether you're healing from illness, trauma, or other difficult times, these mindfulness stress reduction techniques can support your healing.
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Need 45 Trauma-Informed Practitioners or Clinicians For Study on Using a Brain Regulation Headband-Bellabee Designed To Help Trauma Survivors Regulate Their Brains.
Need 45 Trauma-Informed Practitioners or Clinicians For Study on Using a Brain Regulation Headband-Bellabee Designed To Help Trauma Survivors Regulate Their Brains. All trauma informed practitioners who are suffering with or who work with adults or children suffering with C-PTSD, PTSD, Developmental Trauma, Depression, Anxiety, ADHD & Sleep Disorders are welcome to apply to be considered for this study. The deadline to request and submit your application is: March 20, 2020 As a trauma...
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Need 45 Trauma-Informed Practitioners or Clinicians For Study on Using a Brain Regulation Headband-Bellabee Designed To Help Trauma Survivors Regulate Their Brains.
Need 45 Trauma-Informed Practitioners or Clinicians For Study on Using a Brain Regulation Headband-Bellabee Designed To Help Trauma Survivors Regulate Their Brains. All trauma informed practitioners who are suffering with or who work with adults or children suffering with C-PTSD, PTSD, Developmental Trauma, Depression, Anxiety, ADHD & Sleep Disorders are welcome to apply to be considered for this study. We currently have 41 applicants, and applicantions are approved on a first come first...
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Parenting during a Pandemic: Donna Jackson Nakazawa Shares
Donna Jackson Nakazawa was a featured guest in an online conversation about coping with COVID held on Twitter recently. It was hosted by KPJR Films . Donna was asked about "effective 'go-to' survival techniques" for parents and her Twitter thread response is comforting, centering, and compassionate. Her words are consolidated and shared, with her permission, below: Donna Jackson Nakazawa is a science journalist and the author of six books, including “ The Angel and the Assassin: The Tiny...
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Pip had high #ACEs
I just finished reading Great Expectations for the second time. I could relate to it much easier this reading as I used an ACEs lens to understand Pip's experiences and challenges. Dickens knew in 1860 the effects of Adverse Childhood Experiences. It seems strange to see humanity hasn't really evolved emotionally and socially that much in 160 years. Hopefully the ACEs movement will help propel our consciousness raising.
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Positivities of Persistence Series: Persistence & Positivity Defined
While some scholars may attribute persistence to a need for control, I like to take the stance with those who look at persistence as a will to not give up. More and more research is emerging on resilience and its positive impact in off-setting ACEs (adverse childhood experiences), even learned resilience skills in adulthood.
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Rebuilding Lives while Building Homes: Tony McGuire's Resilience-Building Carpentry Class
Tony McGuire is a great carpenter. He ran his own construction business for years. Then he wanted to get into teaching. He became a Tenured Faculty member at a local community college, and landed in the state penitentiary as a Basic Skills Carpentry instructor. So how could that be connected to saving lives with a 20 buck investment? Tony got touched by CRI’s trauma-informed training. He saw himself past and present and knew somehow that, “with this information comes the responsibility to...
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Reconnecting to your Body after Peritraumatic Dissociation
In this article, we will talk about one of the most common symptoms of complex post-traumatic stress disorder – dissociation. We will explore different methods and tools that help us to reconnect with our body in the long term. Since one of those tools is therapy, we will also talk about the limits of talk therapy, and address how working with our body directly can teach us new and healthier responses when we are overwhelmed. Definition and Explanation of Dissociation For every trauma...
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Self-Compassion as an Antidote to Empathy Fatigue [Pro.PsychCentral.com]
Are you a mental health professional or caregiver? Would you like to know how to avoid burnout or compassion fatigue? Many of us know that we need to watch out for compassion fatigue (Figley, 1995) but are at a loss on how to do this. Compassion fatigue is “a state experienced by those helping people or animals in distress; it is an extreme state of tension and preoccupation with the suffering of those being helped to the degree that it can create a secondary traumatic stress for the...
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Sesame Street Resources for Families Coping After Natural Disasters
In the aftermath of recent hurricanes and wildfires, the Sesame Street in Communities team wanted to reach out to provide information on our available resources to help families cope in the aftermath of natural disasters, and other traumatic experiences. Bilingual videos, articles, printables and more, are all available for free on our website at www.sesamestreetincommunities.org . Here are the links to a few topic pages that may be most useful to you as you work with families in the...
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Settling In While Feeling Unsettled
How quickly the outside world has influenced our inner world and changed our thoughts, patterns, and triggers. Life is definitely coming in waves. We feel a sense of safety if we can be in a healthy home, fear and worry if we have to venture out for food, calm returns after we practice something that soothes and regulates us, and anxiety builds when we hear news and the impact the virus has on the whole world. We are beginning to expect and accept many unpredictable and unknown...
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Seven Strategies I Use To Reregulate As Anxiety Symptoms Surface
So, how does Teri Wellbrock bring herself back into a state of calm once the anticipatory anxiety has been triggered? Here is Teri's personal go-to list. Please keep in mind she created this plan on a trial and error basis. She loaded her coping skills toolbox with exercises, fidgets, courses, books, therapy suggestions, and techniques discovered through personal research. Following is her top seven strategies, however, please note that she has a much larger bag-o-tricks to pull from if needed.