Tag: anxiety

Using Your Senses as Self Care

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Using Your Senses as Self Care: Grounding

Blog by Ashley Simpson, LCSW at Agape Therapy Institute

Your senses are powerful. Your senses link deep in your brain to your memories. Your brain - your amygdala specifically - can bring you back to a time and place that you have been in the past using sensory data. For example, the smell of bacon cooking reminds me of my grandmother.

In some cases this can be unpleasant. If you have experienced trauma, activating your amygdala through your senses can send your thoughts back to a time and place where you have been harmed or threatened in the past. Next your hippocampus is stimulated by this memory, which triggers the fear response… thus, the flashback and stress response. 

Grounding

To calm the fear response in individuals who have experienced trauma, have anxiety, or are experiencing a panic attack, there is a set of coping skills called “Grounding.” Grounding exercises use the individual’s senses to focus on the here and now, calming the amygdala and bringing you into the present, and to relax, calming the hippocampus and nervous system. This allows the person to feel calm, centered, and in control of their emotions.

Using your 5 senses to ground and calm you

So first, let’s review your five senses: sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell. A wonderful thing about using your senses to ground you is that you can access them at any time, no matter where you are. You can either bring awareness to your senses in the present moment as you are, or you can manipulate your senses to bring a pleasant feeling, ie: burning a candle or using a nice lotion, sucking on a peppermint, turning on soothing music, walking outside, etc.

Another benefit of grounding using your senses is that it forces you to focus your thoughts and attention on the exercise. This can temporarily soothe your mind if your thoughts are anxious, racing, negative, and if they feel out of control.

Grounding Exercise

One of my favorite grounding exercises is the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 method. 

Take a deep breath in through your nose, and exhale out of your nose slowly.

In this moment, notice:

5 things you can see
4 things you can touch
3 things you can hear
2 things you can smell

Book an appointment with Ashley by clicking here.


Photo by Tatiana from Pexels

Tags:

  • anxiety
  • counseling
  • depression
  • healing
  • joy
  • mental health
  • mindfulness
  • psychotherapy
  • resilience
  • self help
  • self-care
  • solution focused
  • somatic experiencing
  • stress

Compassion Fatigue

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Compassion Fatigue

Blog by Ashley Simpson, LCSW at Agape Therapy Institute

Are you a caregiver? Are you the primary caregiver of small children, have a child or other family member with special needs, have someone in the home who is ill, or have an elderly parent you care for? Do you work in a field where you are constantly taking care of others? Do you feel exhausted by negative news stories and find yourself thinking “why bother?” It is common for caregivers, and empaths, to experience something called “compassion fatigue.” 

What is Compassion Fatigue?

There are two definitions of “compassion fatigue” in the dictionary. One is: “the physical and mental exhaustion and emotional withdrawal experienced by those who care for sick or traumatized people over an extended period of time”. The other is “apathy or indifference toward the suffering of others as the result of overexposure to tragic news stories and images and the subsequent appeals for assistance.”

Signs of Compassion Fatigue

Essentially, your body, mind, and heart say “I can’t care about this anymore” and you shut down. You may be experiencing this syndrome if you feel annoyed, keyed up, or irritated by the person you are caring for, and/or others around you. You may not want to be touched. You may crave alone time, feel exhausted, and shut down to others around you. You may experience irritability in your everyday life and not know where it is coming from. You may experience feelings of anger, resentment, or sadness and not have an explanation for them.

Coping with Compassion Fatigue

  • Take a break.

This can look like scheduling time for your own self-care, hiring respite care to take a few days or weekend off, or shifting responsibilities around to take some of the load off of your shoulders. If you work in a caregiving profession, you may need to access resources on “burnout” and may need some time away from work. You may need to take a break from the news and/or social media for a little while. 

  • Do something to take care of you.

You have been taking care of others, and that often comes at the expense of your own self-care. What is something that feeds your soul? Is it art? Cooking? Music? Dance? Gardening? Exercise? Start scheduling regular times to “fill your cup” and do something for yourself. Schedule these things for yourself and stick to that schedule. 

  • Talk about it.

Sometimes telling another person how you feel can “lift the load”. Letting someone in on your sacrifices, frustrations, grief, etc. can be healing. This can be a trusted family member, friend, or therapist.

Book an appointment with Ashley by clicking here.


Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.

Tags:

  • anxiety
  • caregiver
  • community
  • compassion
  • compassion fatigue
  • counseling
  • healing
  • mental health
  • mindfulness
  • psychotherapy
  • relationships
  • resilience
  • self help
  • self-care
  • stress
  • telehealth

Comparative Suffering

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Comparative Suffering: How Silencing Your Own Pain Hurts Everyone

Blog by Rebecca Gallardo, GSCI at Agape Therapy Institute

This has been a tough year. Disappointment and hardship seem to surround us. Last week my heart ached as a friend shared her struggle to manage a full-time workload while overseeing her two young children’s virtual education. Yesterday, I consoled a neighbor who hasn’t been able to visit her father in a nursing home for over 6 months. And just this afternoon I heard from a friend who had lost his job when his company was forced to downsize. Each of these friends is suffering in a very real way, but there is another thing they have in common. They each expressed shame for having shared their feelings, saying: “But I shouldn’t complain. So many people are suffering more than I am.” 

Despite feeling the very real stress of the current pandemic on their own lives, their inner narrative was that of comparison. They are not alone in feeling this way. When we are suffering, most of us feel triggered to compare ourselves with others. Without thinking, we rank our pain and suffering, and we use the results of that comparison to deny ourselves the permission to feel. We tell ourselves that we are not in enough pain. Our experience wasn’t as bad as someone else’s experience, so our pain doesn’t matter as much as theirs does. We can always find someone else who is suffering more than we are, and that comparison inevitably leads us to decide our feelings aren’t appropriate.

But this is not how our emotions work. Pain is pain, no matter how it measures up against someone else’s. Our feelings will not go away simply because we decide they are unjustified. Instead, we begin to feel guilt and shame about having the feelings, and our unattended suffering grows. When we feel ashamed of our feelings, we don’t honor them, and we don’t honor ourselves. And here’s the most surprising part: when we don’t honor our own feelings of pain and disappointment, we can’t honor the pain of others either. The mistaken belief behind comparative suffering is that our ability to express empathy is finite. We believe that if we show ourselves empathy by allowing our feelings to surface, we won’t have enough empathy left to share with others. 

In reality, the way to healing is just the opposite. When we practice empathy with ourselves, we create space for more empathy. The surest way to nurture your reserve of compassion and empathy for others is to attend to your own feelings. Everyone deserves to feel their feelings. When we’ve attended to our own feelings without shame, we open our attention outward, and become more emotionally available to others. When we honor our own struggle by responding with empathy, healing results, and that healing affects all of us. Until we can receive empathy with an open heart, we are not able to give with an entirely open heart. 

We collectively hurting. Most of us are carrying extra burdens right now, and yes, some of those are heavier than others. Let’s honor each other by releasing ourselves from the shame of comparative suffering. We can have gratitude for our blessings, while still acknowledging that our hardships exist. We can keep our pain, fear and frustration in perspective, but permit ourselves to express those feelings. 

Here are 3 healthy ways to attend to your own feelings:

  • Check in with yourself once a day. Ask yourself how you are feeling. Make space for your answer. This is not a place for judgement. Be compassionate with yourself. If you are not feeling well, accept that answer. Use a journal to record your response to your daily check-in. If you don’t love to express yourself with words, use art. Draw or paint your response. It can be as brief or as detailed as you like. There is no wrong answer to your question.
  • Choose a somatic healing skill that works for you. Calming your body helps to calm your brain. Take three deep abdominal breaths from the diaphragm, take a quiet walk in the woods or a park, soak in a warm tub, connect your bare feet to the earth outside, or do a gentle yoga practice. When your body feels calm and safe, your parasympathetic nervous system (the one that helps to calm you after stress) turns on to tell your brain that are okay. 
  • Offer yourself what you need. If you just need a quiet hour to yourself, take it. If you need a day off work, make the arrangements. If you need to turn off the news for a few days, turn it off. The world will keep turning. If doing any of these things requires someone else’s help (ie. childcare, etc), ask for that help. You are worthy of others’ time and empathy. 

We can all make this challenging year just a bit less difficult if we honor ourselves by acknowledging our own suffering, without comparison. Find ways to show yourself empathy this week. We will all benefit.  

*****

Want to learn more about comparative suffering? I recommend listening to Brené Brown’s podcast, Unlocking Us, episode “Comparative Suffering, The 50/50 Myth, and Settling the Ball.” https://brenebrown.com/podcast...

To book an appointment with Rebecca, click here.


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Tags:

  • anxiety
  • counseling
  • depression
  • healing
  • mental health
  • mindfulness
  • psychotherapy
  • resilience
  • self help
  • self-care
  • solution focused
  • stress

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