Well, I'm finally back from a nice long break.
So let's get right down to business...
Here are a few excerpts from Life After Trauma - A Workbook for Healing
by Dena Rosenbloom, PhD,
and Mary Beth Williams, PhD
Trauma can turn your world upside down -- afterward, nothing may look safe or familiar.
This supportive workbook helps survivors of all types of trauma rebuild their lives. Filled with comforting activities, relaxation techniques, and self-evaluation questionnaires, the book explains how and why trauma can throw you for a loop and guides you toward developing inner resources for coping, self-understanding, and self-care.
Step-by-step chapters help you to reclaim a basic sense of safety, self-worth, and control; enchance your capacity to trust and be close to others; protect yourself from overwhelming memories; and heal from trauma-related reactions that may be disturbing your day-to-day life.
Written by experts in treating trauma and based on extensive research, the workbook can be used on its own or in conjunction with therapy.
TEN EFFECTIVE WAYS TO COPE WITH STRESS
1. Be Flexible, Think Flexibly
Leftover fear from trauma can restrict your creativity and narrow your range of options. From where you stand, you may only be able to see one course of action. But if you shift your position, your view changes. Thinking flexibly means being able to see things from new or different perspectives rather than from the same old one. When you do this, new thoughts and choices become visible that were hard to see before. Being able to talk with others can be a big help in thinking more flexibly.
2. Learn All You Can About What Is Going To Happen
Fear and stress make it more difficult to think flexibly, but gathering as much information as you can -- in advance -- can help you stay flexible and see your full range of choices. You may fear something will happen, but how do the facts of the current situation match your emotions? What can you learn about the situation? The more you know in advance, the more choices you can have, and the more you can feel in control.
3. Plan Ahead
When you have gathered information about something that might happen, you can begin to consider, in advance, what you can do to prepare. Perhaps there are ways to make it easier for you. When you plan ahead, you plan when you can still think clearly and flexibly, before the highest level of stress. What will you need at those moments of peak stress? What might help you? How can you have these people or things handy? You can create a plan of action to make things easier for you and as safe as possible.
4. Avoid Impulsive Changes
Impulsive change can put you at risk. Respect your needs for safety. Try to think things through before you act. This gives you a better sense of control and power in the situation and can help you keep your risk low.
5. Try Not To Change Too Many Things At Once
You have the power to change many things about yourself, your behavior, and your reactions to others. Using this power most effectively means knowing its limitations. Changes, even good ones, create stress. The more changes, the more stress, and therefore, the harder it is to stay flexible. Changing too many things at once can overload you and make everything harder. You can end up feeling out of control. You can feel more in control by not changing too many things at once.
6. Pay Attention To Your Feelings And Reactions
You need to value and respect yourself enough to listen to how you feel. Paying attention to yourself gives you basic, crucial information. It is part of how you learn what is happening inside you. It is how you know whether or not you are changing too much, going too fast, or taking too many risks. Paying attention to yourself can give you the information and evidence that you need to plan ahead for next time.
7. Talk To Others Who Have Survived Similar Changes Or Experiences
Trauma can result in powerful, uncomfortable feelings of being crazy, separate, and different from others. It is even more powerful in a comforting way to realize you are not alone. After not knowing whom to talk to or how to put your experiences into words, it can be tremendously healing to learn there are others who understand and can share what you have been through. Talking to others who have had similar experiences also helps you get back in touch with yourself, and accept yourself.
8. Seek Support From People Who Can Listen, Offer Feedback,
Or Help In Other Ways
Everyone needs help sometime for something. When you can begin to count on others for help, it takes a great load off your shoulders. Finding people you can trust for even small, low-risk, practical things is a start. Finding people who will listen and accept you for who you are is one of the greatest supports of all.
9. Allow Yourself To Grieve Losses
Trauma and change bring loss. Although uncomfortable and at times even unbearable, the pain of loss can be one way to acknowledge and respect what you value. Pain confirms that what was lost was important to you and mattered. Respecting your feelings means that you have value, you matter, and continue to matter, even through loss.
10. Take Your Time
Healing from trauma can mean rebuilding your life. You need time to do this safely and solidly. Take the time. If you listen to your feelings and reactions, and respect what they tell you, you will move as fast as you can. Remember that you cannot control everything. If you try to go faster than your own limits allow, it will slow you down in the end.
The above ways of coping work for any stress, not just trauma. They are valuable tools for the rest of your life. We recognize that nothing erases trauma's tragedy and pain, but the experience as a whole can also include the silver linings of positive change and personal growth.
If you would like to purchase this book, go to Amazon.com by clicking here.
Have a stress-free day!
Love always,
Mudd
xoxox
P.S.: Questions or not, I would love to hear from you. Please email me at
anxietybuster@gmail.com or simply click the link on the sidebar.
